Spaces for life - Upper Palaeolithic

In the Mediterranean area, most of the known sites of hunter-gatherer groups are located in caves or shelters, although ongoing research field work is revealing the existence of outdoors camps like those documented in France, Germany, and the Czech Republic or in the Russian and Ukrainian plains. Palaeolithic groups were nomadic, with increasing habitat stability over that period. This mobility is related to the exploitation of the environmental natural resources and their seasonality.

Habitat sites were not all equal, so that it was possible to distinguish between those who consider living spaces and other more specialized as hunting camps. In these sites physical elements of division of space are not documented, although there can be recognized different areas of activity from the study of the dispersion and/or concentration of certain archaeological remains recorded in the excavations: knapping areas, food processing areas, or areas where bone tools were made. The structures around which the activities seem to concentrate are hearths that bring together most of the activities of the groups. Other infrastructures which have been documented are shallow pits and some post holes that attest to the presence of partitions walls made of wood and skins or tripods.